John Locke

John Locke appears in this account not as a character in a narrated life, but as a political thinker whose theory of consent marks a transition between Hobbesian sovereignty and Rousseau’s popular sovereignty. Locke makes government answerable to the governed and rulers removable for tyranny, yet leaves popular consent largely tacit and without a regular constitutional means of expression.

Locke in the Social-Contract Tradition

Locke is situated within the second, or proper, form of social-contract theory: society originates in an agreement among the individuals who compose it. The account traces this line from Richard Hooker, whom Locke borrowed from, through Milton and Hobbes, and then to Locke and Rousseau. The theory’s familiar implication is that the people remain sovereign and that the authority of kings and magistrates is derivative, but its history shows that agreement could be used to defend sharply different conclusions.

The contrast with Hobbes turns on what the people are understood to have agreed to. Hobbes treats the original agreement as one among individuals, with government outside the contract; the people then authorize a ruler and alienate sovereignty to that authority. Locke and Rousseau both challenge the idea that a people can permanently transfer away its liberty. Locke’s political argument is associated with justifying the Revolution of 1688, while Rousseau is credited with stating the popular-contract theory in its purest and most logical form.

Consent, Government, and Resistance

For Locke, government depends on the consent of the governed not only at its institution but continuously. Rulers who govern tyrannically may therefore be displaced. This makes consent a continuing condition of political authority, rather than an irrevocable act by which a people submits itself once and for all.

The account also identifies a limit in Locke’s formulation: he provides no machinery short of revolution for expressing popular opinion. Consent remains essentially tacit and assumed, and his concern to protect life and property accompanies a caution about popular rights that reduces them almost to nothing. His theory affirms a popular basis for government, but does not establish a routine institutional procedure by which that popular authority can speak.

From Locke to Rousseau

Rousseau’s response is presented as a move from Locke’s tacit consent to active agreement periodically renewed. The distinction matters because popular consent, if it is to be more than a name, requires constitutional means of expression. Rousseau accordingly makes the people’s continuing participation central to his account, even though his admiration for ancient Greek city-states and for Swiss free cities, especially Geneva, leads him to doubt that self-government can work at national scale. He instead favors independent city-states joined in federative leagues.

The comparison places Locke between two larger accounts of sovereignty. Hobbes recognizes the people as the original source of authority only to have it surrender that authority in fact; Rousseau makes popular supremacy inalienable and distinguishes the sovereign people from the government that executes its decisions. Locke contributes the principle that government rests on continuing popular consent and that tyranny can justify removing rulers, but leaves unresolved how consent is to be expressed between revolutions. In the book’s account, Rousseau turns that unresolved problem into a constitutional and philosophical question about the enduring relation between political authority and freedom.

Political Right and the Standard of Legitimacy

The discussion of Locke belongs to a broader distinction between describing existing political arrangements and establishing the principles by which any arrangement can be judged legitimate. Actual history and institutions may inform political inquiry, but facts alone cannot create rights. The central question is therefore not simply how governments have arisen, but what could make political obligation rightful.

That normative standard sharpens the significance of Locke’s continuing-consent principle. A government’s origin cannot by itself settle whether its authority remains legitimate: consent must persist, and tyranny can break the claim to obedience. Rousseau’s formulation presses the issue further by asking how people can join their force for common protection while still obeying themselves and remaining free. Locke is thus a key interlocutor in the account’s movement from popular consent as a political claim toward a systematic theory of popular sovereignty and legitimate freedom.